Thursday, 8 November 2018

Google launched it's UPI app "Tez" on 17th Aug 2017 and within a few weeks it got very popular among the users. Reason was, it's rewards and referral program. It was giving Rs.51 to the referred person and the person who referred the user to install the app. Along with this, it was giving surprise money to users for transacting with other Tez users.
Later, on 28th August 2018, Tez was rebranded as "Google Pay". After rebranding the name, it started offering huge amount (Rs.201) for referring users, although the odds of winning money through scratch cards which it gives for sending money to other Google Pay users decreased. But to make Google Pay more rewarding, google added bill payment and recharge services to Google Pay. For paying bills and doing recharges, it gives assured rewards. If you still haven't installed Google Pay, I recommend you trying it once as it is one of the best UPI apps available after PhonePe which is easy to use and has great cashback options which get credited directly in your bank account. Follow the steps given below to get started with Google Pay:

1. Click this link to install Google Pay in your phone. Make sure you are installing Google Pay for the first time in your phone.
2. After installing Google Pay in your phone, launch the app and sign up using your mobile number which is linked with your bank account. The SIM card must be there in the phone in which you have installed Google Pay.
3. After signing up for Google Pay account, check on the top right corner on the screen to open the menu and check if my referral code is applied in your Google Pay account. If not, apply the referral code : 3h5AZ
4. Now on the top left of the Google Pay screen, you would see the option to link your bank account. Tap over it and link your bank account in Google Pay to receive reward money and use the account for your transactions done for bill payments and recharges. Create your UPI PIN and always remember it because this PIN would be used to do transactions on any UPI platform.
5. After you link your account and apply referral code, you should see my photo as shown in the screenshot below. Just click on the photo, tap "Pay" and do a transaction of Rs.1 only. After successful transaction of Rs.1, you would get Rs.51 instantly in your linked bank account. Alternatively, you may tap over "Pay" option and send Rs.1 to UPI address ashutoshkushwaha22@okhdfcbank to get your sign up reward.

6. To check your rewards, you may click on "Rewards" option in Google Pay app and to know about the ongoing offers, click "Offers" option.

7. That's it. You can earn good amount of rewards everytime you send money to other Google Pay user or pay your bills or do recharges using Google Pay.

Thursday, 11 October 2018

WhatsApp is a very popular application which has replaced the text messages. You can find WhatsApp in almost every phone. It is easy to use, free, and supports voice and video calls as well. To be able to send a message to someone using WhatsApp, you need to save the mobile number of the target person and then it would appear in the list of your whatsapp contacts. But sometimes, we just need to send one or a few messages to someone, for enquiry or any other purpose and we don't want to keep that person's number saved in our phone. So here is a very easy way to send WhatsApp message to anyone without saving their phone number. Just follow the steps below:

Method 1:
1. Open notepad or any other text editing application (I prefer Notepad++).
2. Copy the following code and paste it in the notepad.

3. Save the notepad file as whatsapp.html
4. Copy this file in your phone and open it. If asked, choose chrome or any other browser in your phone to open it.
5. After opening this html file, type the number of the person (use the country code before the number without the "+" symbol) you want to send a WhatsApp message and in the message box, type the message and click "Submit" button.
6. That's it, you would see that WhatsApp will be launched and your message is ready to be sent to the target number.

Method 2:
If you are feeling lazy to type the code and saving html file etc, I have created a separate page which you can directly open in your phone and use it to send WhatsApp message to anyone without saving their number. Click Here to open the dedicated page.

Wednesday, 10 October 2018

Microsoft recently rolled out its Windows 10 October 2018 update which changes the Windows version to 1809 but things didn't go well, as expected. It is not a new thing when Microsoft Windows 10 updates messes with the PCs so I'm actually not too surprised if the update deleted the user files. Recovering files deleted by Windows 10 October 2018 Update is getting hard for users and Microsoft both. After the complaints received by users, Microsoft paused the update and stared working on the fix. The bug has been fixed and Microsoft is testing it among the insiders to get more feedback from the insiders.
It is strange that the bug was already reported to Microsoft months ago by so many Insiders but without paying attention to the reports, Microsoft rolled out the update which caused data loss for many users. As Microsoft says, the data loss issue was tied to a Windows 10 feature known as "Known Folder Redirection". Because of the malfunction of this feature, new folders like "Documents", "Pictures" etc were created and the old folders were erased which took away the data stored in those folders. Microsoft representatives say that Microsoft Tech Support team has tools to recover the data but the truth is, the Tech Support guys are completely clueless about any such tool. In Microsoft, tech support guys aren't allowed to use any third party software which makes it really difficult for them to fix the issues quickly. For example, if your PC runs slow, Microsoft Tech Support executive would use "System Internal Tools" provided by Microsoft but that is not very effective. You can speed up your PC just in 5 minutes if you use any third party tool like AVG PC Tuneup Utility. But let's not talk about these things, let's know how to recover your deleted files:

Recover files deleted by Windows 10 October 2018 Update

As per my knowledge, if you try to perform system restore or switch back to previous version of Windows, you won't get your files back deleted by the Windows 10 October 2018 update, but still you are in luck because you can use a few tools, or better to say, data recovery tools to bring your files back from the dead. There are so many free and paid data recovery tools available in the market so it is upto you that whether you want to use the free software or the paid one. If you want to use the free tool, I would recommend using "Piriform Recuva". This tool can really be a life saver for the users who lost their files because of the Windows 10 October 2018 update. Not only this, you can recover any other file too which you accidentally deleted and is no longer available in the recycle bin. You can use "Wise Data Recovery" too as an alternative and this tool also is available for free.

If you want to go for the paid software, you may use "OnTrack EasyRecovery Professional" software. This is a great software which can recover big files too. As an alternative, you may use "EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro" and "Disk Drill Professional" software too.

One more way is there which doesn't work most of the times, but you may give it a try. Just right click on the Documents folder and click "Restore Previous Version" and check if your have any old version of the folder available. If yes, then select the old version from the list and click "Restore".

If you use any of these tools to recover your files, I'm sure you would get your data back which was deleted by the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. I'd recommend using the free tools which I mentioned in the post to make sure that your data is still recoverable. Because using the affected PC would replace the recoverable files and make it difficult to recover them. So avoid using the PC if the files were deleted and run the data recovery tools as soon as possible to avoid the permanent loss of your data.

Thursday, 17 May 2018

Suppose you want to send an email to a responsible person of any company but you don't have their email address and even after searching on Google, you still couldn't find the email address of that particular person or his colleague. Well, in this post, I'll tell you a way to access the contact details (emails, social media profiles and phone numbers too, if available) of employees of multinational companies like Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn etc just in a few seconds. Doesn't it sound cool? Follow the steps mentioned below:

2. After opening the link, click "INSTALL FOR GMAIL" and a new tab will open which will open chrome webstore where you will be asked to install clearbit extension. Click "ADD TO CHROME" and install the extension in your browser.

3. After the extension gets installed, open gmail and compose an email. In the email compose box, you should see the clearbit connect icon, click on it.

4. If you are asked to select a plan, select the free plan. After that, authorize the extension to access gmail contacts.

5. Now when you click the clearbit connect icon in the gmail compose box, your should see a search bar. Suppose you want to know the email address of Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, search for Microsoft in the search bar and there you would see the list of the employees of Microsoft. Look for Satya Nadella and click on his name. That's it, you would see his email address and social media profile links.

6. In the same way, you can check the emails of employees from any company.

Wednesday, 2 May 2018

Windows 10 April 2018 update is already out for the Windows 10 devices and it has got some great improvements over the previous versions of it. If you have still not received the update, open settings and check for the update manually to get the update and if the update is still not available for your PC, you may download and install it manually using Windows 10 update assistant.
I installed the update in my laptop and the installation went smooth and I didn't notice and errors or bugs during the installation. The previous windows updates, especially monthly cumulative updates caused lots of problems during installation but the Windows 10 April 2018 update (Feature update to Windows 10, version 1803) installed easily.
After it got installed, It's welcome screen opened with Edge browser and I noticed improvements in display resolution and windows graphical elements. The new Windows 10 April 2018 update has a few new features as well which I'll mention below. With this update, Microsoft has removed a few features too which you can check In This MS Document. Let's have a look on what's new in Windows 10 April 2018 Update.

1. TIMELINE
Timeline replaces the familiar "Task View" button that shows what apps are currently running. Timeline as well, shows the list of what apps are running and along with that, it shows the history of activities and apps you've used in the past 30 days. These activities and apps sync across multiple devices and you can easily pick the same activity in any device you are signed into with your Microsoft account.

2. DICTATION
This feaure of Windows 10 is like speech to text but is more accurate and easy to access. If your computer's default language is set to English-US, you can use the dictation feature by pressing Windows + H keys together. If you have a good mic, you can write a whole document just by speaking the sentences. I'm impressed with the accuracy of the dictation tool, it is amazing (you should have a clear English accent to use this feature efficiently)

3. MICROSOFT EDGE TAB MUTING
Google chrome has added this feature recently, and Microsoft also brings the feature to it's Edge browser with April 2018 update. Using this feature, you can mute loud and annoying websites (with autoplay enabled video ads). Edge certainly seems to be a better option for browsing the web with this feature, but still it couldn't compete with chrome and requires improvements.

4. FIX BLURRY APPS
In windows 10, you might have noticed that scaling some of the apps in windows 10 makes them blurry. With this update, Microsoft has fixed the issue and the apps will be auto adjusted to look sharp and clear even after scaling them or changing the monitor.

5. SEPARATE PREFERENCES FOR DIFFERENT APPS
This is a great feature that has been added in Windows 10 April 2018 update. You can now set input and output devices per application. For example, you can set your woofers for Spotify app and can set headphones for browser. In the same way, you can set your desk mic for podcasting app and studio mic for your music recording software at the same time.

6. QUICK BLUETOOTH PAIRING
Microsoft has added quick notification for pairing Bluetooth accessories. Whenever a Bluetooth peripheral would be in range, Windows will produce a notification to quickly connect to the Bluetooth peripheral (such as Bluetooth mouse).

7. LESS NOTIFICATIONS FOR WINDOWS DEFENDER
Windows defender scan notifications are really annoying sometimes and with this update, Microsoft has reduced these notifications. You can now suppress these notifications and get rid of the windows defender notifications after every successful scan.

8. NEARBY SHARING
This is a feature similar to Apple's AirDrop that allows you to share files with nearby Bluetooth enabled devices. Nearby sharing lets you easily share website, photos or documents to any nearby Windows 10 machine. This feature is disabled by default in Windows 10 and you can enable it from settings.

9. FOCUS ASSIST
Microsoft's "Quiet Hours" is now "Focus Assist". It is same as the Airplane Mode of Android. Focus Assist will mute all the notifications when you are busy and don't want to be disturbed. You still have a choice to allow particular apps of your choice to show notifications while the Focus Assist is active.

10. MANUAL GAMING PERFORMANCE
With Windows 10 April 2018 update, you can customize graphics performance per game. Using this feature, you can set games to High Performance or Power Saving. This feature is useful if you want to play a game allowing it to use limited graphics resources to save battery.

If you have installed the new Windows 10 April 2018 update, share your experience with it in the comments. If there are any issues with your PC after installing it, please let me know and I'll try to get some troubleshooting steps to fix those issues.

Monday, 9 April 2018

In recent Windows 10 cumulative updates (like, KB4088776), people are facing a lot of problem with the installation of the cumulative updates. It gets downloaded but at the time of installation, it fails with different error codes (0x800f0900, 0x800f081f, 0x80070002, 0x80240034 etc). I've checked Microsoft forums and found that the issue is still unresolved and Microsoft says that it would release the fix for it soon but still there are no fixes released for the errors. I had the same issue with my own laptop and it was really frustrating that after the installation attempt of the KB4088776, my laptop froze and it became so unstable that I had to reinstall Windows. After testing some troubleshooting steps, I finally made it and was able to install the update successfully. Here are the steps I followed and you should try them too if you had the issues with Windows 10 cumulative update installations. But before starting the troubleshooting steps, I recommend enabling DotNet 3.5 using the method I explained here: http://www.pctricksguru.com/2014/01/how-to-fix-dot-net-35-error-in-windows-8.html and It works for Windows 10 as well. I recommend you logging into Windows with microsoft account too before starting the troubleshooting. So when you are ready, follow the steps given below:

1. First of all, open cmd with admin and run the following command:wusa /uninstall /kb:4054517
Running this command will uninstall the previous cumulative update from Feb 2018. I'm sure that Jan 2018 update also failed for most of the PCs but if you find any PC with Jan cumulative update already installed, you must uninstall that update too using the same command, just replace the KB number with the Jan 2018 update. Uninstallation will take some time so let the command uninstall the faulty KB updates, don't do anything, sit back and relax until the uninstallation of the Jan and Feb cumulative update is completed. If you are prompted to restart the computer, do it.

2. Now open cmd with admin and run the following command:SC.exe config trustedinstaller start=auto
Now restart the computer.

3. Now the next thing to do is, open Windows group policy editor (open RUN and type the command gpedit.msc and hit enter). Now expand "Computer Configurations > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Updates". If you click on Windows Updates, at the right side of the policy editor window, set the following properties to "Disabled" by double clicking on them and choosing the Disable option.a) Allow Automatic Updates Immediate Installationb) Configure Automatic Updates

4. After setting both of these properties as Disabled, open the cmd with admin rights again and run the following commands one by one:net stop wuauserv net stop cryptSvc net stop bits net stop msiserverren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old ren C:\Windows\System32\catroot2 Catroot2.old

Note: While running C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old command, you might get "Access Denied" error. "ren" command is used to rename any folder in DOS, and So don't worry if you get this error, because DataStore folder in the SystemDistribution folder is always in use by existing windows processes, so you can delete or modify it. So open C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder and delete all the contents (DataStore might not get deleted, so don't mess with that) within the folder.

4. Now in the cmd window, run the following commands one by one:net start wuauserv net start cryptSvc net start bits net start msiserver

6. After finishing the download, go offline, if possible and then start the installation of the downloaded msu file.

7. The installation will take about 4 to 5 minutes (or more) and finally it will end up with the successful installation of the KB update.

8. Now restart the computer and check for the updates history, you will see that KB4088776 has been installed and you will see that there are no updates pending if you check for windows updates.

9. Now restore the changes made in step 3.

NOTE: Follow the steps exactly in the way I told to avoid any errors. In a few PCs, During restart, you might face a blank screen issue after windows boot up but no need to panic, the blank screen would be there for about 10 minutes and then it would never appear again. If you have installed any Antivirus, I recommend uninstalling it completely. After the troubleshooting, you may reinstall it. But if you don't have the key for Antivirus, you should disable it instead of uninstalling it. In my PC, I was using AVG free version and I performed all these troubleshooting steps after removing AVG completely.

Friday, 9 March 2018

Windows 10 is a feature rich operating system by Microsoft and it has lots of new features and apps. "Photos" is the new photo viewer in Windows 10 that has replaced the classic photo viewer in Windows 10. Personally, I don't like the new Photos app and would prefer the old photo viewer instead, because it was fast and had simple layout. So if you are also the one who likes the old photo viewer of Windows, I'd tell you a simple way to bring the old photo viewer back in Windows 10. You need to follow the steps given below to enable the old photo viewer in Windows 10:

1. Open notepad and copy and paste the following code in notepad window and save the file as photoviewer.reg (make sure that you use the .reg extension so that we could merge this file in windows registry)

2. Now run the photoviewer.reg and merge it with windows registry.3. Now, right click on any image file and click OPEN WITH.4. It will open the list of image viewer applications installed in your computer. If you don't see the classic photo viewer there, click "Choose Another App" then "More Apps".5. From the extended list, you can find Photo Viewer. Click on that and set as the default photo viewer.

Tuesday, 13 February 2018

If you use Netbeans IDE for coding your java application then you might have noticed a red vertical line at the right side of your IDE. Sometimes it really gets frustrating seeing this line while reading the code within the IDE. There is a simple solution to fix this issue which you can follow to get rid of this red vertical line in NetBeans editor. Follow the steps below:

1. Open your netbeans editor and navigate to Editor. For different platforms, use these paths:Mac: NetBeans->Preferences->EditorUbuntu: Tools->Options->EditorWindows: Tools->Options->Editor2. Now in the Formatting tab, select "All Languages" as shown in the image below and set the right margin to 0.